So, we're more dishonest than we used to be, according to a University of Essex study published on Wednesday. And trust in politicians has slumped still further since last summer's riots, according to a different analysis from a PR firm. Should we be worried? Yes. Should we be surprised? No.

It matters because trust between people who know each other is self-evidently important, but trust towards people and institutions we don't know is vital to the functioning of society – social capital which has to be sustained, as Barack Obama said in his state of the union speech in Washington on Tuesday night.

If young people are becoming less honest – as the Essex study suggests – then things are going to get worse, unless teenagers become more responsible as they get older. Cheer up, that might well be the case. And it's mostly what the study's author called "low level dishonesty" which may be a relativist judgment in itself.

The Essex study has been organised by Paul Whiteley, a veteran professor of politics who is heading something new called the Essex Centre for the Study of Integrity, an adornment to that county's public image which may offset its The Only Way is Essex reputation. Good.

Whiteley has been fretting about the decline of civic culture – and how to revive it – for years. You'll find a paper of his here about the decay of grassroots political activism. It's fertile ground for politicians in search of ways to reconnect, the most recent being David Cameron's much-launched " big society" initiative which – like John Major's "back to basics" or Tony Blair's "big conversation" – got enmeshed in rival realities like the austerity drive.

Basically, the new study says that the 2,000 people it interviewed were found to be less squeamish about matters such as adultery, drink-driving, petty theft or damaging a parked car and not reporting it than was the case in a similar study conducted in 2000. Then, seven out of 10 said an extramarital affair would never be justified; now the figure is around 50%. Now only two in 10 say picking up money lost in the street is never justified, half the 2000 level. Two in three justify lying in one's own interest.

They may not be dramatic shifts and we can all conjure up grey areas where circumstances or ends may justify means. Most people still condemn bribery, tax-dodging and drink-driving – more than do speeding, which is just as well since I assume that most of us drive above the speed limit at one time or another. I certainly do and on Radio 4's Today programme – where Whiteley was interviewed – fellow academics complained about the structure of this particular attitude survey.

Many answers depend on context, they say. Speeding to hospital with a sick passenger? Of course that might be justified. Being sympathetic to a friend locked in an unhappy marriage? That might show greater tolerance rather than the me-too individualism which characterises much of the way we live now.

But, however fragile, we may be able to see a direction of moral travel here. Plenty of other studies report alienation, isolation and the erosion of social solidarity. The Essex study's only counter-trend finding was that more Britons disapprove of benefit fraud than they did, 85% against 78% a decade ago.

More importantly, the young were found to be more tolerant of laxity than the old, an average "integrity score" of 47 points against an average of 54 for the over-65s. Differences between the sexes and between social classes is far less marked, Whiteley told Today. Traditional sexual taboos such as underage sex are especially less marked among the young, he says. I guess that might change too as they get older, wiser (and bits drop off them) or when it's their own kids experimenting with underage sex.

That benefits point may be a clue. The newspapers bang on quite a lot about benefit fraud, it's an easy target and most of us can feel quite cross about tabloid tales of feckless and lazy families who expect the rest of us to keep them and their many kids. The media – TV as well as tabloids – is less censorious about other forms of destructive antisocial behaviour, say promiscuity or substance abuse, except when it's convenient to take the high moral line against an errant politician or footballer.

Some analysts – for instance philosopher Onora O'Neill in her Reith lectures a few years back – argue that the demands of transparency and openness which are now routine in our society (see Vince Cable on top executives' pay only on Tuesday) may actually be undermining trust in society by the relentless way our shortcomings are exposed.

I have some sympathy with that. Wednesday's Daily Mail – my regular benchmark in these matters, it's far and away the smartest of the tabloids – has yet another attack on Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, who only last week forced the Telegraph (not as smart as the Mail) to apologise for accusing him of leaking against Michael Gove to the Guardian.

What's Huhne done this time? Why, he bought a flat in trendy Clerkenwell, presumably because he signed over his former marital home to his ex-wife, the economist Vicky Pryce, whose views of the transfer of speeding points on the M11 in Essex (itself worth a question on an Essex survey: is it ever justified?) are currently in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service.

As with Peter Mandelson, whose jet-set private life features elsewhere in Wednesday's Mail (cheekily too, since it arises from Nat Rothschild's libel case against the paper itself), Huhne's underlying crime is to be a bloke who's made a few bob – in the City before becoming an MEP/MP – but still clings to leftie Lib Dem ideas like renewable energy which the Mail dislikes. Windmills, that's your big mistake, Comrade Chris.

Some readers may think Huhne deserves all he gets, others that he's being persecuted. There's room for both perspectives, but it's hardly a recipe for restoring the trust in public life which we'd all like to see. If you want to read how much it's slumped, according to the TrustBarometer published by the Edelman PR company – on the eve of the Davos world economic summit – you can find it here and – in more detail here.

It's not a cheery read – and the UK part of Edelman's findings are illustrated by photos of Nick Clegg and Barclays' Bob Diamond. So I'll stop here and sign off with Paul Whiteley's own observation, the fruit of years of study. Levels of trust and integrity matter because they are tied to a sense of civic obligation – to pay our taxes and pull our weight – he suggests.

"If social capital is low, and people are suspicious and don't work together, those communities have worse health, worse educational performance, they are less happy and they are less economically developed and entrepreneurial. It really does have a profound effect," he explains.